magpie's shiny things

Transportation

Swoon.

Motocrosser with sad­dle bags? Really con­fus­ing, and cool at the same time . Watch the video, but turn the sound waaay down first.

Because I love you all so very much and you should all be as hap­py as the com­muters in this 1958 Disney vision of the future of trans­porta­tion. Really.

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Society

Tedders sent this one over. The back­lash against over parenting.

Modern pira­cy is a busi­ness. Now with it’s own man­aged risk invest­ment pools.

Rinderpest isn’t some­thing that has ever made the head­lines in the USA. A cat­tle dis­ease relat­ed to measles (weird huh?) kills wide­ly and quick­ly. Make that killed. Rinderpest is set to become only the sec­ond dis­ease to be erad­i­cat­ed by human effort.

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Design

Cool clock and the kit/instructions for mak­ing same.  Tell time with the shad­ows cre­at­ed by a cen­ter pin and LEDs. Come on y’all, Christmas break is com­ing up and you know you need projects.

More cool. Salt and pep­per shak­ers that will not bore you or make any­one squeee.

Story cards. Low tech sto­ry telling. Calvino’s Castle of Crossed Destinies for the 2+ crowd.

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Art and Images.

Last week was Thanksgiving and the Macy’s parade. Here are a cou­ple of quick sketch­es done the day before as the bal­loons were being prepped.

Will Einser, one of the great ones. Golden Age Comic Book Stories brings a col­lec­tion of “splash” pages to the front line.

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Nostaligia

Woolworth was nev­er real­ly cool. But they sure tried hard. The 1971 LP sale, as seen on TV.

Transportation

There’s a cou­ple too many tar­ty bits and he should have tak­en the pas­sen­ger pegs off, but this is my fav Bonneville treat­ment to date. There’s a good pic­ture, some info on the BellaCorse site (last entry), and a few more details scrounged up by MCN.

The ulti­mate in bike mount­ed cam­eras. This is how they get those close-up at-speed asphalt shots.

Tempest in a teapot or egre­gious theft of ideas? FIM now has it’s own elec­tric bike rac­ing series. Did they steal it from TTXGP?

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Technology — Security

Who is respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of your cred­it card data as it trav­els through the labyrinth from card swipe to your month­ly bill? Several restau­rants that lost a bun­dle of cash due to the inad­e­quate secu­ri­ty of their POS sys­tem would like the sys­tem cre­ators to be held respon­si­ble for their blunders.

The tel­cos, Sprint in par­tic­u­lar, are mak­ing it triv­ial for LEOs to look up your loca­tion data as pro­vid­ed by your cell phone. No war­rant required, no over­sight pro­vid­ed. It’s start­ing to hit some of the blogs and the top­ic may take off lat­er this week. This is the orig­i­nal research by Christopher Soghoian.

Missing limbs are being replaced by increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed pros­thet­ics. A look at the past, present, and future tech­nol­o­gy of arti­fi­cial limbs. I think the pic­tures are beau­ti­ful, your tol­er­ance for images of com­bin­ing of human and machine may differ.

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Science

The British Royal Society released full scans of 60 sem­i­nal sci­en­tif­ic papers. Including the 1671: “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors” and Edward Bullard’s 1965 “The Fit of the Continents Around the Atlantic” which pro­vid­ed a cru­cial boost to the the­o­ry of plate tec­ton­ics. Wired Science dis­cussed these and oth­ers and pro­vides a link to the full set.

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Art, Images, and Design

I will pay (in cook­ies) some­one to make me a good sized vec­tor ver­sion of the logo on this oth­er­wise hideous car.

These char­ac­ters and their ram­bling back sto­ry weird me out in a hap­py way.

These cheap chic graph­ics by Christine Celic for Mudslinger Coffee in Greenville NC are rockin’.

Yeah, I know you all hate twit­ter. But if you got­ta go there I sug­gest one of these clever avatars from Adam Korford. I’m torn between the Wild Things mon­ster and Linus with his blanket.

Turkish beer cans turned into fab sculp­tures includ­ing a moto.

Rusty robots. Detail shots and the place to buy.

Dracula cha-cha. I kid you not.

More tomor­row dearies.

Transportation

Mystery bike on eBay. Combined Design Guzzi G7 Sport. Red is the best col­or for pret­ty things.

Hell for Leather brings us a hand­ful of pho­tographs from the Red Bull Los Andes 2009.

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Art, Images, Animation

Steve McQueen. At the begin­ning of his career, when his bat­tle was with the world and not his Hollywood han­dlers. What can I say?

Stop motion and book art in the same video. For the NZ Book Council. Awe inspiring.

Short and sweet today m’dears.

Transportation

The Mystery Machine gets a a new look in this zom­bie based remake. And Scoobie gets a breed change? (’cause that’s a dober­man not a dane.) Get the T‑Shirt at Threadless.

And while you’re shop­ping you might want to pick up one of these neat‑o patch­es.

Now you’ll need a scoot­er to go with the patch. I can offer you the fol­low­ing links.

Nicely graph­iced Giggle.

Rock-ola. This three wheel­er by the juke­box peo­ple, no lie.

Then it’s off to the Siberian Motocross on com­bat bikes.

Enough of the silli­ness. This is just pret­ty. Victoria V35 Bergmeister.

I’ll ping and see if we can get a slight­ly revised ver­sion of this help­ful poster. But what bike to feature?

The Fiat 500 is cute. The Abarth ver­sions (of all the vin­tages) are one of my secret vices.

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Making and Doing

Knuckle busters has an arti­cle from the Jan 1961 issue of  Popular Mechanics — drill bits for met­al work. Enlightening.

Writing in the sand is for sap­py movie fade-outs. Okay maybe not any more. Kids get to play and a mes­sage prints in the sand. Oh the possibilities.

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Art, Images, Illustration

Architectural firm Studio Lindfors imag­ines what our cities will look like if they were flood­ed by polar ice cap melt.

Jason Limon has skil­lz. But most­ly I love the Electrickery sign.

An inter­view with Shaun Tan. Often pigeon holed as a chil­dren’s illus­tra­tor, his images hint at larg­er narratives.

Alex Chechik, fresh out of school with a well devel­oped style. Looking for work in ani­ma­tion. Different from most of what I’m seeing.

Three black and white pho­tos to round out the morn­ing. No commentary.
One.
Two.
Three.  (NSFW)

That’s it. Talk amongst your­selves while I set up the next show.

Art, Images

Goncalo Viana did this clever illus­tra­tion of a car as a hel­met for an arti­cle on car safety.

More of  Goncalo’s work on his port­fo­lio page.

Nerdbots. Lovable found object sculp­tures. The logo rocks too.

Mercedes Laguanas is from Madrid. Mysticism infused portraits.

I have not read any of Stuff of Legends. In fact I had­n’t giv­en it any head space at all until I saw this detail from one of the cov­ers. If the sto­ry is as intense­ly inter­wo­ven as the graph­ic ele­ments of this image I may need to get some.

Chimeras by Antoine and Manuel. Work from 2006.

Charming artist. Charming inter­view. Charming work.

Women in the GDR. Black and white pho­tographs by Sibylle Bergemann. Starting with a moto por­trait. Let the slide show run.

Gouache on paper. Ric Stultz uses sim­ple forms and visu­al puns to set up uni­ver­sal ideas. Doughnut, hack­saw, and handcuffs?

Happy day after the binge.